do obese people really use power wheelchairs or is this a meme or something?

21 comments

1. I’ve seen it once or twice. But it’s not common. I generally assume that if they’re in such a condition it’s a medical issue.

2. It depends on where you are, but yes. I have seen it quite a few times.

3. Usually it’s someone with some other medical condition or disability who happens to also be obese. I’ve never personally known any people who use it just because of their weight.

   I worked at a retail store in college and the only people who used them were very elderly or disabled, not just chunky.

4. Correlation =/= Causation

   There is a slight skew towards fatter or obese people using wheelchairs, but wheelchair usage is rarely *because* they are fat or obese.

   The conditions that lead to someone needing the wheel chair are often *also* the conditions that make them fat or obese. i.e. If someone has limited mobility, then unless they have a good metabolism and/or are *really* watching their diet, they will not exercise enough to work off all the excesses of a diet needed to keep the human body running at a basic minimum. This is an example of how a single cause (limited mobility) has two effects for the patient (wheelchair usage and obesity).

5. For sure it happens sometimes.

   Sometimes it’s because people weighing a lot puts a lot of strain on your joints and they become disabled. Other times being disabled means you can’t easily burn calories and people get really big. Either way, why should i care tho?

6. It’s not usually just because they are obese, often they have something that caused the weight to settle on, like a bad knee

7. I’ve only ever known one person personally who was overweight and used them. She was a visiting Australian woman…

   That being said, her ankles were fucked up and she had just beaten cancer, but suffers from nerve damage.

   She was not down to walk all over walmart and I can understand why.

8. Some do

9. [deleted]

10. occasionally, but they are normally looked down on by Americans too. The vast majority of what you see on American media is a representation of things that happen rarely or even most Americans don’t like.

11. I know this is AAA, but just for reference and some nuance: here in the Netherlands it is pretty common.

12. The fatties in Texas ride those things every day.

13. Quite a lot of them. I worked for about a decade in a grocery store, and there was usually at least one non-disabled (e.g. parked in a normal parking space) obese person in the store using one of our riding carts at any given time.

14. Unless anyone here has gone and asked everyone they see sitting on a Rascal what their health history is, no one can answer this question.

15. Usually the person has a medical issue that leads to limited mobility that leads to obesity. I don’t assume the person using the motorized wheelchair is using it *because* they are obese. There’s a huge stigma based on weight and so I think people erroneously make that assumption. I’m not saying it never happens just that it’s my perception and experience that there’s a medical reason for it.

16. Some people are too obese to walk

17. It’s mostly a meme.

    I mean it’s happened before but I’ve never seen it in person and I imagine there are other health issues at play beyond simply being fat and lazy. It’s one of those things where a handful of pictures of maybe a couple dozen people in a country of 330,000,000 get blown out of proportion.

18. People use power chairs for any number of reasons, including obesity.

19. Some do, but you’re talking about morbid obesity on a scale where it makes walking hard. People like this are not that common and European nations have them as well. All Western nations have an issue with obesity.

20. The only person I’ve known who was obese and used an electric wheelchair was thin before his neural degenerative disorder reduced his physical activity to near zero

21. Obesity is not their only condition. Co-morbidities like spinal degeneration, amputations from diabetes or war injuries affect mobility. Lack of mobility often causes the obesity – it can work both ways.